Electric stove top burner as 8 ohm load?

[Pushtone]

A friend claims he tests PA power amps with a stove top burner
as a speaker load. He claims an electric stove top element is around 8 ohms.

Can anyone confirm this? I have a gas stove at home. If so it might be a way to
a DIY power soak (and keep your beverage warm on those festival gigs too).

I have a DI with a speaker level input but it requires it's thru to be
connected to a speaker load. It would be cool to use a stove element
as a load for silent direct recording.

This sounds far fetched but can anyone put a meter on their stove? I would love to know.

[jonathan perez]

yikes! 

[Pushtone]

yikes! 

Yo dude! don't meter it while its hot 

[Mark Hammer]

Conventional resistors are rated in terms of heat dissipation.  A 1/4W resistor can pass current up to a point, but once more than a 1/4W of "work" is being done, that resistor's ability to tolerate the heat generated in the process is compromised and the resistor may well burnt out, not unlike a slo-blo fuse.  Stove-top burners (as are those wiggly wire things in toasters) essentially ARE high wattage wirewound resistors designed to heat up real good without necessarily burning up in the process.  The question that remains to be decided is whether the typical DCR/impedance of such an element is would be suitable for a representative dummy load.  Chances are that if it was gonna pass the sort of current that would translate into enough heat to boil up your ramen noodles (you ARE a musician, right?  ), it would have to be a low resistance; but what exactly?   I might note that I've seen at least one dummy load construction article in Audio Xpress magazine using similar sorts of heating elements.

[Pushtone]

Thanks Mark, that encouraging.

So, if someone could please meter their stove element
and it comes in between 6 and 10 ohms then it will work?

The element will have to be disconnected (pulled out) from the stove before metering.

[KORGULL]

I get 27ohms for the larger elements and 43ohms for the smaller ones on my stove.

[hairyandy]

Now THAT'S a Hot Plate!



I can't believe the restraint around here, I thought for sure someone would jump on the obvious pun...yeah, I'm an idiot, I admit it...

[R.G.]

Ohm's law to the rescue again.
I= V/R

P= V*I = V*(V/R) = V*V/R so R = V*V/P

Let's see - 120Vrms AC and 8 ohms is P = (120*120)/8 = 1800W. So an 1800W load on a 120V line is 8 ohms.

But stoves usually run from 240Vac. Then P= 240*240/8 = 7.2KW

A typical hair dryer is about 1KW. So P=V*V/r, and R = (V*V/p) so R = (120*120/1000) = 14.4 ohms. That includes the fan, as well, so it's actually probably more like 16 ohms.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

I once saw a guy using a single bar radiator with a wire tied on an inch off one end, as a tap to drive a diode bridge for a car battery charger!!!!! sometimes it's true that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". Been a few years since I saw him... wonder why... yeah the mains is 230 here in Australia.

[zachary vex]

i have a feeling that, much like a light bulb, the resistance of a stove element changes with temperature.  naturally, driving an element like that with a guitar amp would never get it up into the "glowing red" range, but measuring it with a meter at room temp might be a relatively accurate way to determine its resistance when it's first connected to an amp.

remember those schematics of oscillators that contain lightbulbs as an active device to keep amplitude constant?

[Doug_H]

I guess the big question in my mind is: Why?

Cement wirewound resistors are only a few bucks, no?

Doug

[redeffect]

The cement wirewound resistor would be more precise and take up a lot less bench space...

[Mark Hammer]

I think the original question was posed simply to confirm the veracity and plausibility of a friend's claims.  And the answer to the question seems to be "yeah, the guy's not yanking your chain".  Whether that provides an optimum or ideal or even Q-est and D-est dummy load, compared to the alternatives, is quite another question.

[Ge_Whiz]

I would guess that a 12" stove element would sound better than a 6" element. Especially in a gass-reflex cabinet. 

[Jason Stout]

Cement is mixed in one of these.



Cermet is both ceramic and metallic, and a popular composite used in capacitor manufacturing.

Jason

[TELEFUNKON]

Cement wirewound resistores

[GFR]

I would guess that a 12" stove element would sound better than a 6" element. Especially in a gass-reflex cabinet. 

I read an article from CCDB (the guy that made electronics stuff for "Os Mutantes") where he said he hooked an amplifier to an electric iron (yeah the kind used to iron clothes - the non-steam variety of course) and actually got some sound out of it